America’s tariff war with China has escalated into a numbers game, with the White House bandying about the threat of an unheard-of 245 percent tariff on Chinese products as President Trump orders an investigation into “security risks” associated with America’s “reliance on imported critical minerals.”

It’s not until deep into a newly released fact sheet that the White House says China “faces up to a 245 percent tariff on imports to the United States as a result of its retaliatory actions,” a reference to steep tariffs imposed by China after Mr. Trump set reciprocal tariffs of 125 percent on Chinese products.

That headline-grabbing 245 percent figure also includes a 20 percent tariff “to address the fentanyl crisis” — in effect a penalty for China’s failure to stop the flow of fentanyl into American markets, much of it via Mexico — and “tariffs on specific goods, between 7.5 percent and 100 percent.” 

The real impact of what might appear to be an escalation in the confrontation between the world’s two largest economies was implicit in President Xi’s exhortations on the virtues of “free trade” during a swing through the capitals of three southeast Asian nations. First at Hanoi, then at Kuala Lumpur, and finally at Phnom Penh, he’s been repeating the mantra, “There are no winners in a tariff war,” while pulling out all the stops in the quest for victory in a trade war in which he’s signing dozens of deals with the leaders of Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia. 

On the way, he’s denouncing “unilateralism and protectionism” — without, of course, hinting at what China’s been doing for years to protect its markets against foreign competition while racking up a trade surplus with America last year of $270.5 billion. That’s by far the largest portion of all the countries that contributed to China’s total 2024 trade surplus of $992.2 billion. 

Buoyed by news that China’s gross domestic product increased by 5.4 percent in the first quarter of this year, Beijing did not initially seem terribly upset or affronted by the dramatic increase in tariffs announced by the White House.

The spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, Lin Jian, when asked about Mr. Trump’s latest tariff escalation, said simply, “You can ask the U.S. side for the specific tax rate figure” before repeating the official Chinese litany, “Tariff and trade wars have no winner,” and, “China does not want to fight these wars but is not scared of them.”

More practically, a commentary on the website Apple Insider, which calls itself “a reliable source on all things Apple,” downplayed the real significance of the latest Trump tariff increase.

“Despite scaremongering headlines,” it said, Mr. Trump “did not escalate his ‘reciprocal’ China tariff to 245 percent.” 

Basically, it said, the 245 percent tariff is “the maximum applied out of an enormous range of tariffs against U.S. firms importing from China.” The figure, it explained, “is a reinstatement of previous tariffs that don’t apply to Apple or big tech at all.” While “some firms are facing having to pay two and a half times the cost of goods they import from China, it is not the blanket escalation” that it’s “made out to be.”

Mr. Lin scoffed at a remark from the White House spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, who, after the release of the fact sheet, said, “The ball is in China’s court, China needs to make a deal with us, we don’t have to make a deal with them.” Rather, according to Mr. Lin, it was America that “initiated the tariff war” while China “has taken the necessary countermeasures to safeguard its own legitimate rights and interests.”

The White House fact sheet, in addition to announcing the sensational if somewhat misleading 245 percent tariff figure, said that Mr. Trump had signed proclamations to close loopholes and exemptions to restore a 25 percent tariff on steel and increase the tariff on aluminum to 25 percent. The increases were all part of the president’s “fair and reciprocal plan” intended “to restore fairness in U.S. trade relationships and counter non-reciprocal trade agreements.”